Ex-Mass. physical therapy clinic owner Chang Goo Yoon sentenced to prison [masslive.com]

MassLive.com

A former Massachusetts physical therapy clinic owner who submitted over $1 million in health insurance claims for fake appointments has been sentenced to over two years in prison, according to the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chang Goo Yoon, a 62-year-old South Korean national who lives in New York City, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised release in federal court last week after being convicted of two counts of healthcare fraud in January 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a press release Tuesday. He was also ordered pay restitution, but the amount has yet to be decided.

Between 2014 and 2018, Yoon owned and operated physical therapy clinics in Brookline, Waltham and Boston’s Allston neighborhood, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. During this time, he billed patients and their insurance companies over $1 millions for fake appointments and reaped more than $300,000 in fraudulent money.

Approximately $150,000 of the claims were billed for dates when he was traveling to places such as South Korea, Los Angeles and Toronto, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Another $50,000 were billed for dates on which he was gambling at casinos such as MGM Springfield, Twin River Casino in Rhode Island and Golden Nugget in Atlantic City.

Yoon also billed $30,000 in claims for his own treatment after he was involved in three car accidents — most of which falsely listed one of Yoon’s employees as the physical therapist, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. The remaining claims listed himself as both the patient and the physical therapist.

Yoon pressured his employees to participate in the fraud, Acting Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in the release. Levy also noted that fraud such as this drives up healthcare costs.

FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen added that Yoon was not licensed to practice physical therapy in Massachusetts.

“This long-running scheme appears fueled by sheer greed, and the FBI and our partners are committed to bringing medical professionals like Chang Goo Yoon, who choose to betray their oath and get involved in fraud, to justice,” she said in the release.

Yoon’s website indicates that he still has a location in Hartford, Connecticut. That location is still listed on Google, but it’s unclear whether it is still operating.

Yoon’s bio on his website states that he was a professor of physical therapy at Yeongdong College in South Korea from September 1991 to August 1997. Since 2001, he’s practiced in Colorado, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. and is licensed to practice in Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia, it says.

The website also claims he has a doctorate in physical therapy from Boston’s Northeastern University. Northeastern did not return an enrollment verification request on Wednesday.